When starting out with managing a social media account for a veterinary clinic, it can be a little daunting trying to figure out what to post and when. In this article, we want to shine some light on WHEN to post to the most popular social media platforms for veterinary clinics. Cheyanne breaks down the frequency and best time to post on Episode 6 of her podcast.
If you'd rather listen on the go or share it with a friend, here's the link to get the full episode.
Determining YOUR Ideal Posting Frequency
When determining how often you need to post, we want to look at a couple of things:
What are your clinic's overall goals or purpose for using social media? Is it to grow your following to get new clients, build a community around your accounts, use it for a communication channel, or something else?
Where are you posting? Are you looking to post on Facebook, Instagram, and Stories on either Facebook or Instagram?
Knowing the answers to these two questions will help you strategically optimize your posting frequency and maximize the time spent creating and publishing posts. I'm all about getting those results as efficiently and effectively as possible!
PRO TIP: Getting into a good consistent groove with posting to any social media is key in training the algorithm that you are an active user of the platform and have great content to show your followers. Which is just one part of boosting your engagement rate on social media.
Are you looking for more support in your Social Media efforts for your Veterinary Practice? Join the waitlist for the Veterinary Social Media Foundations course!
Now, if we are being realistic, we need to take into account one more aspect of your posting frequency, and that is your bandwidth.
It's important to take your time into account and reflect on what you can realistically do with the time and resources you have available. You need to design a posting schedule that works with the amount of time you have to create, publish, and monitor social media posts.
Without a clear understanding of how much time you have to dedicate to posting, you fall into the cycle of not posting consistently and witnessing your account not performing the way you or your clinic desires. Which ultimately leads to frustration!
Here are a couple of questions to help you develop a posting schedule that works for you and within the resources you do have:
How often would you like to be posting?
How often can you realistically post while keeping a consistent posting schedule without burning out?
What is the overall goal for our social media accounts, and can you realistically reach the goal?
What do you need to make this happen?
Do you need support in making this happen?
Getting clear on these questions will help you formulate what a good, flexible, and reasonable posting schedule looks like for you.
PRO TIP: Once you have your desired schedule designed, plan out your posts to help you stay accountable to your new schedule. This will enable you to visually see your schedule and help you prepare your upcoming posts ahead of time.
General Guidelines to Get Started With Posting
If you are unsure how often to post, use these guidelines to get started. If you can post more than what is suggested here, do it! The more you post, the more opportunities your content and posts have to be seen and for people to connect with you.
I will share recommended guidelines for the two main and popular social media platforms for veterinary clinics as of 2023.
POSTING FREQUENCY: Posting to the feed at least 3-4 times a week. Stories 3-4 times a day during business hours. Keep in mind, you don't have to be on Social Media 24/7 to be active and effective. You can use scheduler apps or features within the app you're posting to and set boundaries for when you reply to comments and messages.
WHEN TO POST: It's important to consider who your target audience and current audience is when it comes to time of day for sharing your posts. If you have a larger volume of patients that are busy moms, 6-8AM may be a higher viewed timeframe, while 8-10AM may be a better posting time if your patient base is more retired pet owners. Evenings can also often be a highly viewed time as people are on social media after they're settled in at home.
Determining your ideal posting days and times will likely take some trial and error. Reviewing your metrics will help you to better understand when people are viewing your content and when they are engaging with your posts.
If you want to dive deeper into learning more about Social Media frequency posting and how to track your audience's activity, be sure to join the waitlist for my course:
POSTING FREQUENCY: Posting to the feed at least 3-4 times a week. Stories 3-4 times a day during business hours.
Posting during business hours gives your audience an idea of when you may be active on the platform and may indicate to them when they may get a reply to a comment or message that they've shared. Keeping in mind that you want to be cautious of when you're engaging with your audience so they are aware of your boundaries and they don't expect constant communication, especially outside of business hours.
WHEN TO POST: As with Facebook, determining the best times of day to post on Instagram will require a review of your analytics. But as a rule of thumb, I encourage you to post early in the day (between that 6-8AM timeframe). The bonus to Instagram is that they offer insights to quickly view when people are the most active on the platform - this gives you the opportunity to post 10-15 minutes before those times so you are able to capture more eyes on your content.
After identifying the ideal posting times, I highly encourage utilizing a scheduler to pre-plan your content posting so you are not trying to share content last-minute simply because you know views may be higher at that time. Social Media Schedulers I recommend:
Later - I personally use in business
Plann - another scheduler I favor
What To Do Next
Determining your posting frequency is just part of the journey for those who manage the clinic's social media! It takes time to test and see what will work for your audience and your clinic's social media accounts.
There is a lot of advice out there that claims a one size fits all approach to social media.
The truth is, no advice works for every business the same. So, take this as an exciting time to test, experiment, and see what results you generate. From there, see where you can tweak and improve to make your social media marketing fun and effective!
Grab some (or all) of my FREE Resources to help you with your Social Media
In my FREE Quick Start Guide, I walk you through more on how to navigate posting for your clinic's social media accounts, how to create social media posts, how to get engagement, and more!
Download the guide today and get all your posting questions and more answered!
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📑 New to managing social media for your veterinary clinic? Grab my free quick start guide
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📌 If nailing social media for your veterinary practice is a goal of yours this year, you definitely don't want to miss out on my course Veterinary Social Media Foundations